Viewtiful Joe (2003)

I managed to beat Viewtiful Joe for the first time but I had to do it on easy difficulty. This game is not balanced at all. Most of the hard mode is way too hard and most of the easy mode is way too easy. It's really frustrating. I'm honestly not sure I am capable of finishing this game in hard mode. It's just that difficult.

What makes the difficulty even worse is the stupid, ridiculous, horribly designed save system that had me leaving my game paused for multiple days at a time like I was playing a NES game in the late 80s. To explain, the game has two types of checkpoints. The only differentiating factor between them is whether or not you can save. Otherwise they operate identically. What I mean by that is, when you run out of lives you start over with a new batch of lives from the mose recent checkpoint, regardless of whether it's a save one or not. So, if you are stuck on a part that is after one of the non-save checkpoints and you want to stop and turn the system off, you have to resign yourself to needing to go all the way back to the previous save checkpoint and then redo stuff you already completed. DUMB.

To make things even worse, every time you go back to a checkpoint you have the option of spending some of the money you collected in the level that you died in to upgrade Joe. This is cool because it makes it so what you did in the level wasn't all for not. But again, if this is a non-save checkpoint and you want to shut the system off you would lose all of that money and those upgrades. SO DUMB.

All of that said, the story in this game is delightfully goofy and the combat feels wonderful. It's so nice when you get the three primary upgrades and you alternate between slowing down time, speeding up time, and zooming in the maximize your damage. Combine that with clever dodging and discovering enemy patterns and weak points and you have one of the best combat systems of any brawler I've played.

It really is sad that the stupid design decisions hold this game back from being a true classic. I definitely suggest playing it though, but I would start on the easy difficulty and be ready to leave your system paused over night to maximize your enjoyment.

So I quit Battalion Wars and moved on to another game on my Cube backlog, Viewtiful Joe! I played this game when it came out and made it to the shark boss before quitting. Here's hoping I will get farther this time. Lame design element and lack of save points made me leave the game paused when I left for work this morning though...